St Vincent and St Lucia

St Vincent and the Grenadines is actually a group of islands and we checked in at Union Island, stayed 3 nights at Tobago Cays and a few nights in Bequia (pronounced Beckway) before checking out.

The Tobago Cays are the main draw to this area.  These are a group of islands surrounded by a protective reef system.  The water is blue and relatively clear.  Every day small boats come out from the main island selling ice, fresh fruit, bread, lobster, conch and pretty much anything you would need.  This is very Caribbean and we will enjoy it as long as our wallets can stand it. On average, prices are double what might be considered reasonable, but we splurge when we don’t feel like taking the dingy to town.  The whole area is a marine park.  Taking any marine life is prohibited and they charged us about $20 per day to anchor in the white sandy bottom. Every day we snorkeled and enjoyed the green and hawksbill turtles and saw some fish life outside the reef. 

From there we bypassed Canouan and stopped in Bequia.  This is a lovely town with clear water and a nice main street.  The town is lined with small crafts shops and Emily bought an Queen Triggerfish carved from whale bone. This is one of the few places where limited whaling is allowed using harpoons and open boats.  They were quite proud to say they took the annual maximum limit of 4 whales this past season. 

The snorkeling was good around the boat and Emily found an enormous hermit crab just under our boat. 

They have talented model shipbuilders here and we paid them a visit again.  We talked with the owner and for a mere $2500 they could make me a scale model of Emily Grace and ship it to me.  My dear Readers may want to take note of this since Christmas is coming up!

We checked out of Bequia and made an overnight run past St Vincent and dropped anchor in Rodney Bay, St. Lucia.  After two days, two kid boats caught up to us here.  One morning we hiked up Pigeon hill with the crews and 4 kids from What If and Polluxs to see Fort Rodney. The hike was nice with good views of the surrounding area.  We could see Martinique, just 4 hours to our north.  Emily is looking forward to heading there since she will get new eyeglasses there.

 

St. Lucia also has great local vendors that come out to the anchorage each day in small boats selling fresh fruits and vegetables.  Here there are great dingy docks, major supermarkets, hardware stores and marinas only a short dingy ride away.  We managed to find a Butterball turkey, egg nog and all the fixings for a Thanksgiving Day meal. Kim made her traditional stuffing and even baked blueberry and mincemeat pies.  We could have had a pumpkin pie, but since we have found pumpkin everywhere, we opted for the extraordinary!

 

We had forgotten how easy Caribbean cruising was compared to most of the countries we have visited.  Shopping, groceries and parts are always close by and shipping parts from the USA is relatively easy if needed.  This “downhill” sail back to the US is welcome by both captain and crew.

Tom

Grenada

 

Grenada is certainly not without many charms, the weather is warm and the water pretty clear.  There are beaches, mountains, volcanoes, water falls, and of course warm water and water sports.  Grenada is known as the "Isle of Spices" and with good reason.  It is the second largest producer of Nutmeg in the world (and its associated spice, Mace, which is the red vein like coating around the nut), as well as a producer of a wide variety of other spices.  There's no excuse for using old dried cinnamon sticks in your curry when you can get fragrant cinnamon bark still damp from the tree!

We took the advice of Daydreamer and checked into the country at a marina and enjoyed a nice lunch before setting the hook behind Hog Island.  There we found a bunch of kid boats and we stayed put for about two weeks.  Emily played on the beach or sailed around the small bay with about a dozen kids of varying ages.  We had the sail on our kayak and even Tom zipped around the bay. We exchanged schedules and agreed to meet for Christmas in Antigua if not before.

 

Again we rented a car for a day trip.  We crossed the island and got lost on St. Georges one way streets before heading north on the west coast.  We stopped at the Gouyave Nutmeg Processing Station for a tour. 

 

Grenada produces one-third of the world’s nutmeg and this is the largest of the 3 processing station.  We learned that most of the crop was wiped out by a 2004 hurricane and is just now coming back.

Our next stop was the Belmont Estates cocoa plantation.   The plantation provides the organically grown cocoa beans for the Grenada Chocolate Company as well as growing other spices and local products.  

 

Kim and I remembered it a little more than Emily did at age 8, but we enjoyed another tour and sampled chocolate tea and chocolate chunks.  The meal at the restaurant was as good as we remembered as were the hot towels served to wipe our hands before dining.

Following lunch and a tour of their animals and birds, we headed to the Mt. Carmel Falls, which is a stretch of river with two separate falls on it.  We made the winding trip through the foothills into the mountains where we got off at the trail head for the falls.  The walk is quite short and easy, and the path littered with mangoes and beautiful vegetation.  The upper falls are scenic and the water breaks up into a cooling mist as it cascades down more than seventy feet.  These are the highest falls in Grenada.

 

A short walk back up the path and a fork down the river takes you to the lower falls.  As falls they aren't as impressive - as you can see from the picture they are more like a long rock slide.  Our guide explained how to ride the falls from the top all the way down to the big splash in the pool at the bottom.  Emily and Dad made the trip once, but the muddy climb back up prevented us from going again.  It was cooling, however, and made the hike back to the car a little cooler.

We said our goodbyes to the kid boats and decided to seek out another anchorage on the west coast of Grenada which would break up the trip between Grenada & Carriacou.  We headed to Moliniere Point and Dragon Bay, just north of St Georges. We managed to take a mooring buoy and then snorkeled the Underwater Sculpture Park.   The park was created by sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor. Taylor′s aim was to engage local people with the underwater environment that surrounds them using his works which are derived from life casts of the local community.

“Vicissitudes” installed in 2007, at a depth of 14 feet is Taylor's most recognized work in the park, a ring of 26 standing children, holding hands and facing outwards into the current. The design took six months to make, weighed 15 tons in dry cement and was constructed to withstand strong currents and tidal motion. The ring symbolizes the concept of life's ongoing cycle and highlights the importance of creating a sustainable and well managed environment for future generations, holding reference to the ability of children adapt to their surroundings.

 

Although the visibility was very good (for Grenadan waters) some of the sculptures were difficult to spot. The ring of lifesize people, which looms up at you out of the gloom was quite spooky !   We saw the oldest ring first and several of the children had fallen over.  Later in the snorkel, we saw another, more recent ring and all were standing proud.  We toured the bay and saw several other sculptures including a mermaid, several faces, a praying girl and several smaller creations looking like Mayan artifacts.

We pressed on North at daybreak and stopped at White Island for a snorkel before going into Tyrell Bay in Carriacou.  There we will check out of Grenada and move north to the Tobago Cays.

Tom

Zip Lining and Pushing North from Trinidad

We got a rental car and enjoyed the mobility by checking out a few areas we had heard about.  First we headed north to see a natural site to maybe spot some wildlife. The Bamboo Cathedral is located in Tucker Valley, Chaguaramas. It is a stretch of approximately 300 meters, along a Tracking Station Road where the bamboo stalks bend towards each other forming a canopy above the road. The arches formed above bear a resemblance to those found in cathedrals and has remained unchanged for 150 years.   

We encountered some road maintenance guys who, despite the large machete, did not look too menacing.  

 

We did not see the birds that others had mentioned but did hear and see a family of Howler monkeys.  We recognized their unique howls and quickly spotted them in the tree tops before they scurried away.

Just around the corner we found Zip-Itt Adventures where they suited us up for some fun along the tree tops.  The have seven steel cables that run between the tree tops about 100 feet above the ground.  The runs are between 100 to 500 feet long with the short almost horizontal ones first.  Five net bridges connect between the tree top platforms and are made less scary by flat boards that run along the bottom.  They still sway a little as you walk, but the zip lines are the main attraction. 

 

Enjoy the short video

Following the zipping, we did some provisioning at the fresh market and grocery stores. We found the market as colorful as we re/membered.   

 

With the galley filled, we checked out of the country, replenished our beer and wine from the duty-free store and pushed off north.  We had a little mix-up at the fuel dock and they sold us 300 gallons at the local $0.95 US per gallon price which will make us remember Trinidad a little more fondly.  Follow us, Dear reader, as we move north to the spice island…Grenada.

Tom

Mount Saint Benedict and the Caroni Swamp

We took an organized tour to see a bit more of the area before heading north.  Our tour with Jesse James of Members Only maxitaxi took us to see the Saint Benedict monastery and the Coroni Swamp.

Mount Saint Benedict, or the Abbey of Our Lady of Exile, is a Benedictine abbey located in north Trinidad. It was founded in October 1912, by an order of monks from Brazil, after the Order of St Benedict of Italy.

 

The Abbey complex consists of several buildings, among them a church, a monastery, a seminary, a yoghurt factory, a drug rehab center, and Guest House. The whole complex is situated high in the Northern Range, north of St. Augustine. It is visible for miles around, with its landmark tower and distinctive red-roofed buildings.  We said a few prayers in the church and looked around in the gift shop and enjoyed the commanding views.  Jesse talked us into a private tour of the guest house full of antiques and original paintings.

 

Our next stop was the Temple-in-the-Sea, located on the west coast of Trinidad in the village of Waterloo near the town of Chaguanas. The obvious “uncommon” aspect of this beautiful Hindu Temple is interesting in and of itself, but it’s the history of how the Temple came to rest at such an unusual spot that is truly fascinating.

 

The Waterloo Sea Temple dates back to the mid-1940s when a seriously devout and determined Indian laborer named Sewdass Sadhu built the original version on dry-land. East Indian laborers, initially brought to Trinidad in the 1800s to work the sugar cane fields, had few, if any, places to practice their religion formally up until that time. Sewdass, who ran a small grocery store near his home in Waterloo, purchased a small tract of land from the state-owned Caroni Sugar Company upon which he built the original Temple.

No problem, right?

Wrong.

Seems the folks at Caroni didn’t like having a Hindu Temple around. Upon its completion in 1952, they ordered Sewdass to destroy his life’s work. He, of course, refused, an act of defiance that earned him a $400 fine for trespassing on government land, plus two weeks in jail; just enough time for the government to tear down the Temple.

Sewdass’ story could’ve easily ended right there, but this was no ordinary guy. As soon as he got out of jail, he set about re-doing his life’s work in a place no one could quarrel with. 

“You broke the mandir on the land. Then I will build my mandir on nobody’s land. I will build a mandir in the sea.”

Armed with a bicycle, a leather bag, a couple of buckets and the type of determination most of us could never hope to understand, he started building his next Temple, stone by stone, in the middle of the sea.
  He literally built the whole foundation out of stones that he stashed in his leather bag and buckets, trekked to the sea from God-knows-where on his bike, and piled in this spot, 500 feet from the shore, until he effectively created his own island… by himself!  It took a good 17 years, but Sewdass did eventually realize his life’s dream again before passing away in 1971 at the age of 68.

In 1994, when erosion damaged the structure, the Trinidad & Tobago government stepped in to make repairs, even going so far as to construct a bridge to make the Temple more easily accessible from the mainland.

The Waterloo Cremation Site is also next to the grounds of this Temple and we saw the smoldering remains of a pyre as we passed.

We traveled through several communities and saw other temples and mosques proving that today’s Trinidad is truly a melting pot of cultures.  Just before sunset, we arrived at the highlight of the tour.

The 20 square mile Caroni Swamp is the largest mangrove wetland in Trinidad. It lies just south of capital Port of Spain, on the island’s western shore, where the Coroni River joins the Gulf of Paria. 

The swamp is home to some 200 avian species. The most famous inhabitants are the Scarlet Ibis (Eudocimus ruber), Trinidad’s national bird. During the day they feed in Venezuela, 11 miles away, returning to Trinidad at dusk – a spectacle that has become a “must” on tourist itineraries.  Although we had seen these birds up close on our 2009 trip up the Manamo River in Venezuela, we wanted to see these beautiful birds once more.

The swamp is a maze of channels – some natural and some dredged. It’s not surprising that you can’t just hire a boat and go out there yourself – you could so easily get lost. However, the boat captains do these tours every day and know the waterways intimately. 

Some of the swamp was public land and a couple of locals showed us their catch.

Although Scarlet Ibis might be the focus of the trip, there is a vast amount of wildlife in the mangroves.  Within minutes of leaving the jetty we saw our first wildlife – a five or six foot tree boa, sleeping in the branches of an overhanging mangrove, immediately above the boat. 

We also spotted a few birds of prey and several types of herons and egrets as well as some small 4-eyed fish.  The fish had two eyes above and two eyes below the water.  We saw 2 or 3 caiman trying to blend in. 

After a leisurely 30-minute cruise through the waterways, with our guide pointing out a wide collection of bird species, we eventually arrived at a large area of open water. Surrounded by mangroves on all sides and featuring several islands and mud flats, this ‘lake’ was clearly somewhere special. Making our way across the water, we stopped and drifted, facing a mangrove-covered island backed by the hills of Trinidad’s Northern Range. Once the engines were switched off, it became a spot of wonderful peace and solitude.

Six o’ clock was rapidly approaching and the light was starting to fade. One by one we watched bright red ibis fly overhead and land in the tree tops.

Within a few minutes another flock arrived. Slowly, the pace picked up. So did the flock size. Within ten to fifteen minutes it was a continuous procession of birds, with flock sizes of ten to a hundred birds. White egrets were mixed in with the ibis and they roosted side by side. Virtually all of the birds landed on one central island, turning the green of the mangroves scarlet red.

 

Juvenile Scarlet Ibis are black in color. The scarlet coloring, which comes from the diet of crabs and other crustaceans, only comes when the birds have matured at two years of age. The coloring gets darker as the bird gets older. All the early arrivals were mature adult males. As the procession progressed, a few juveniles could be seen amongst the adults. By the end, juveniles represented the majority; clearly not strong enough to keep up with the adults.

As suddenly as it had started, the spectacle came to an end. Light was fading fast and the tour boats started up, cast off and headed back into the narrow channels of the mangroves. A journey that had taken 30-40 minutes outbound became just 10 minutes or so on the return, showing how one has no sense of direction or perspective in the waterways.

We returned after dark and all agreed it was a good day.

Tom